Security threats have evolved significantly over the past years. Advanced hybrid threats, have been designed to attack systems on multiple fronts, sometimes searching for vulnerabilities until one is found. New threats also attempt to attack security technology itself.
Traditional consumer security software suites often included a plurality of various applications such as an anti-virus application, a firewall application, anti-spam applications, content filtering application, etc. Such applications existed in such software suites as a simple bundle. In other words, each product secured its own domain in a vacuum. As such, various security events were acted upon separately by each of the applications.
One of the actions taken by the aforementioned applications includes an alert. Prior Art FIG. 1 illustrates one exemplary prior art system 10 where a plurality of applications separately generate a plurality of separate alerts. As shown, a first application 12 and a second application 14 are included in an application suite 16. In such prior art system 10, the first application 12 is capable of generating a first alert 13, while the second application 14 is capable of generating a second alert 15, as so on.
As is readily apparent, such separate alerting can be quite cumbersome, inefficient, and even bothersome to a user. This is especially the case where each application generates a separate alert for a single event; and further in an environment where a large number of applications exist.
There is thus a need for a more effective alerting technique in an environment including a plurality of applications.